Thursday, August 19, 2010

Welcome to my fantasy football website. I have been playing fantasy football since the seventh grade and I think I have a pretty good head for this stuff. I'm an avid football watcher, played football in high school and college and spent three great summers as a ball boy at Minnesota Vikings training camp in Mankato. Those are my credentials; I hope you find my articles useful as you begin your march towards a fantasy football championship.

Throughout the season I will share my thoughts on which players to start, who to sit and who to pick up off waivers. For this first post, I will be focusing on draft day and sharing with you my strategy.

My first piece advice: make sure you’re prepared on draft night. You should already have a cheat sheet with all position players ranked in order, a position-by-position breakdown, an updated depth chart for each team and a season schedule. These things will help you make smart, swift picks.

Once you have all those things it’s time to devise a strategy. The first thing I do is look at the top 200 players and make my own list (see below my top 100). Once I make my own list I highlight the players I want to target. These are players that if available I will draft. Of course it’s easy to like a lot of players, you need to be selective.

You'll notice most of my top 24 players are from good teams. It is important in fantasy football to have players on the league's best teams. Players who are on the better teams will be expected to play every week at a high level. Players on losing teams can sometimes become complacent or disgruntled during the season. Also, a player is much more likely to play through an injury if their team has a shot at the post-season. And lastly, a losing team is more likely to give their bench players an opportunity to play later in the season. Stars find themselves sitting, while the back-ups try and prove their value for next season.

Pick 48 is usually the last pick in round 4 (12 team league). At this stage of the draft I would aim to have an elite QB and WR, a starting RB and a solid #2 WR. The reason I like WRs instead of RBs is because WRs are less likely to get hurt. Often times fantasy owners will end the season with two RBs that weren't on their opening day roster. It's also important to draft an elite QB, they are extremely valuable. You want a QB that scores points every week, not one who is good one week and awful the next. Picking up good QB and WR is rare during the season, but good RBs will be available -- maybe not on draft day -- but they will be available eventually through free agency.

Once you get to pick 100, your starting line-up should be solidified (with the exception of K and defense). With your starters in place, you can now take a chance on a couple of fliers. These are guys who may emerge as solid fantasy players. This is also a good opportunity to grab a top defense or kicker in the league. I like to grab one of the top 5 kickers and defenses because like an elite QB, those players will score consistently for your team.